


primum non nocere

by amnixiel



Series: primum non nocere [1]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: F/M, Female Reader, Gen, Human Experimentation, Medical Jargon, POV Second Person, Reader is a Doctor, Reader-Insert, Warning: Author's Blatant Ranting About the Profession She Chose for Herself, but being best friends with a Shinra Turk has its hazards, correction: reader is a very tired and grumpy surgeon, mako energy, no really there's so much medical jargon that i'm going to include a glossary, reader just wants to graduate and lord over her own OR with a host of underlings, that's not how mako works
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22983886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amnixiel/pseuds/amnixiel
Summary: You're a tired, overworked third-year surgery resident like all the others in Midgar, trying your best not to kill anybody (inside or outside of the OR) and survive the whims of your jackass upper-level supervisors until you finally graduate and get to terrorize future generations of doctors in your very own OR.You didn't ask to get sucked in to the unholy, lightless abyss that is Shinra Electric Power Company, but, well, maybe you shouldn't have committed the grave error of being both a doctor and the best friend of a Shinra Turk. Or being too poor and lowly to say no to a Shinra-caliber paycheck. Or having overly flexible morals and extremely questionable interpretations of medical ethics....Re: You are the doctor that the Turks have secretly hired to clean up the absolute fucking mess that Hojo has made of Rufus Shinra.
Relationships: Ambiguous/Implied Relationships - Relationship, pending
Series: primum non nocere [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1964020
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	primum non nocere

**Author's Note:**

> This is a very self-indulgent piece in which you are a doctor hired secretly by the Turks to clean up the absolute fucking mess that Hojo has made while experimenting with mako in humans. Including Rufus Shinra (because, come on, mako enhancement is the only way that him surviving the collapse of the Shinra tower makes any sense).
> 
> This is also at least partially an expression of career angst and the love-hate relationship I have with medicine. Welcome to the shitshow. 
> 
> In chapters that are heavy in medical jargon, I will include a glossary here for reference. For the purposes of this chapter:
> 
> Residency - a training period of 3-5 years that takes place after medical school, in which newly graduated medical students are trained in a specific specialty

“Just five more minutes. They’ll be here soon!”

You level a longsuffering look at Elena over the rim of your glass, though you’re not entirely sure that she can really appreciate it through the haze of smoke that hangs in the dimly lit bar. Aside from the fact that she said pretty much the exact same thing literally five minutes ago, you’re a surgical resident with no time (or taste) to spare for bars to begin with. You only departed from your usual cycle of work-sleep-work-sleep to accompany Elena on a jaunt to the party district of town.

Sipping some pretentious apple cider from your glass reminds you that you’re not even partaking in the libations this evening. So _really_ , the only reason why you’re here—crammed on a tiny stool, boxed in on all sides by drunk morons, spurning the surrounding sartorial splendor in a rumpled set of hospital scrubs—is because Elena, your best friend in the whole wide world, absolutely _begged_ you to come meet some of her new co-workers.

And also to keep the fucking _creeps_ away from Elena. You’ve been eyeing the gaggle of frat boys lingering and leering at the periphery of your vision since you walked into the room, and _lo and behold_ , one of them is splintering off of the group to swagger over to your table. Of _course_. In the back of your mind, you acknowledge that this is, in fact, a bar, which is a venue that typically promotes with socialization among strangers. But digging around the innards of six different men over the course of a nearly 24-hour shift has a curious way of wearing at one’s emotional largesse, and it’s not like your patience—outside of patient earshot, anyway—has ever been the stuff of legends in the first place.

You give the kid your best _malocchio_ as he approaches, trying to burn a hole in his probably stupidly expensive suit with the sheer intensity of your directed hatred alone. Sadly, Fratty McFrat does not burst into flames. He doesn’t even seem to realize that you’re there at the table when he finally draws up close and leans down to grin at Elena.

“Hey there, pretty thing. Don’t think I’ve seen you here before. What are you, ah, doing this evening?”

You resist the sudden and overwhelming urge to smash your glass directly into his annoying face—and wow, even you’re surprised at how short your temper is today—and force yourself to hear out the rest of the exchange. Maybe he’s just really bad at first impressions.

“We’re waiting on some friends, actually,” Elena responds amiably, not a glimpse of annoyance slipping through her pleasant and friendly façade. You have always admired her ability to call up such courtesy and charm on command. You can also be scrupulously courteous and convincingly charming, of course—good breeding and a privileged upbringing in the middle-upper class of society have permanently drummed such skills into your repertoire. But you know yourself to be an easily irritated, reclusive hermit at heart. Elena, while not precisely a blushing ingénue, is a compassionate and sweet-tempered soul who follows social niceties out of a sense of general kind-spiritedness rather than out of longsuffering acknowledgement of tradition (as you did).

“I bet my buddies and I could show you a great time while you’re waiting,” Fratty McFrat offers on a breath that reeks pungently of liquor and cigar tobacco. You don’t even try to resist the urge to roll your eyes. You’d bet next month’s paycheck that McFrat would have gone with some variation of that pickup line regardless of what Elena said.

“Sorry, but we”—and here Elena grabs your arm and smiles to impress upon McFrat that you are, indeed, also present at the table—“are fine with waiting for our buddies here. Thanks for the offer, though.”

McFrat turns his eyes on you with a frown, apparently only now registering your existence. You release a sigh through your nose. You’re fairly certain that you could have lived a perfectly complete and fulfilling life without ever having interacted with a person like McFrat, but Elena has dragged you into this train wreck of an interaction and was probably expecting you to do something now, so…

“Yeah. We’re waiting for some friends,” you second unenthusiastically, abandoning all hope for sounding cheerful and aiming instead for something a little milder than the outright derision you feel for this drunken undergraduate.

Judging from his expression, even that goal was too lofty. Now he’s squinting at you with active dislike, taking in the flattened scrub-cap hair, wrinkled hospital scrubs, and tired bitch face.

You stare right back at him, unimpressed. He can come back and judge you once he shows up to last-minute bar trips looking like a daisy after thirty-six hours of getting screamed at by patients, patients’ families, and attending physicians.

“There’s always an ugly prude with the really hot ones,” McFrat complains in a voice that’s probably either supposed to be an indistinct mutter or a snide, whispered aside to his little gang of compatriots, which is still hanging back on the sidelines.

You roll your eyes again. ‘Ugly prude’ isn’t even close to the worst insult you’ve had slung at you over past 24 hours, let alone the last week. “Alright, kid. We’re still waiting for our friends. You can go now.”

Elena, though, takes _great_ offense, the smile sliding off of her face almost faster than you can blink. She was quick to anger in the defense of her friends even back in elementary school when you two had first met, and that hasn’t changed much over the years—although you _have_ noticed that she has certainly grown more creative in meting out retribution over the past few years. Whenever you press her for details, she only vaguely alludes to something about learning about inspiration and finesse at the job she still won’t tell you about. (And, if you’re being honest, the persistent mystery of her employment is at least part of the reason why you’ve so readily abandoned your bed in favor of meeting with Elena’s co-workers tonight. Elena very rarely keeps secrets from you, and this one has been looming larger every day since she first sheepishly admitted that she couldn’t tell you where she was working.)

When you see Elena’s hand start drifting towards her side, though, you nearly choke on your soda. You’ve worked in enough charity clinics in the worst parts of the slums to know what _that_ gesture presages—but this is _Elena_ , for Gaia’s sake. Lovable, kindhearted Elena, who had spent a whole week churning out an entire bakery’s worth of your favorite blackberry tarts to cheer you up when you got rejected from your dream medical school, who always cried at the end of _Love, Actually_ despite having watched it at least a dozen times. Elena isn’t the type to carry a deadly weapon. _Especially_ not a gun.

In the brief beat of peace before someone says or does something stupid, a lazy, drawling voice cuts through the low hubbub of the bar.

“Laaaney.”

You turn to see a slovenly young man with cat-green eyes and hair that could give a fire engine a run for its money slouching up to join you at your table. Judging from the bespoke fit of his disheveled suit, you think he might be one of McFrat’s little cronies before noticing that Elena’s face has shifted from determined outrage to the distinct brand of slight annoyance that you’d normally associate with a younger brother or a dog that insists on peeing on the carpet.

“Reno,” she greets, standing up. You follow her lead. Elena gestures to you and introduces you by name, ending with “she’s the friend I’ve been telling you all about! The doctor.”

“Still in training,” you defer modestly, reaching to shake his hand. Reno shakes your hand with the pleasant, firm strength of a man who doesn’t feel the need to crush the other guy’s fingers to ‘assert dominance’ or whatever other idiotic grandstanding that’s passing as masculinity these days. You instantly like him based on this alone.

“Nice t’ meet ya, Doc,” Reno nods with a sanguine half-smile. Those green eyes sharpen as they turn on McFrat and he queries nonchalantly, “And who’s this, Laney?”

“Oh, he was just leaving.” Elena swells with anger again as your unwelcome interloper suddenly loses his nerve in the face of another man’s appearance. McFrat mumbles something probably unflattering under his breath before heading back to the crowd.

Only once McFrat has disappeared into the throngs of other patrons does Reno turn back to Elena and roll his eyes. “Really, Elena? What, were you gonna start a fight in _here_?”

“Well, since you finally decided to show up, I guess the world may never know,” Elena snaps back at him, but her tone lacks any real heat. “And why are you so late, anyway? I said 1800, sharp.”

Reno’s brow hints at a furrow, and the smirk on his face dims. “Couldn’t be helped. Tseng’s got his hands full.”

Elena apparently extracts much more from this rather vague declaration than you do, her irritation giving way to concern. Certain that you’re missing context, you wait patiently for Elena to explain.

Instead, Elena turns to you with an odd, uncomfortable expression. “Hey, um…this is kind of random, but you said that you’re in your residency, right? You passed your board exams and everything already?”

Hundreds of hours spent in the emergency room and pediatric wards have granted you a keen instinct for detecting when someone is trying obliquely to broach a personal medical issue—and Elena might as well be a textbook example. Her worried brows and pressed lips tell you that she’s appealing to your role as a physician rather than as her childhood friend.

While you’re a little hurt upon realizing that Elena has called on you for your medical expertise instead of your companionship, you smile reassuringly and modulate your body language to receptiveness and sympathy: open your palms, lean in, nod. You’re a doctor, after all. This is what you live for. “Yeah. I’m a bona fide doctor now. Got the little letters after my last name and everything. Just a few more years until they start letting me call myself a surgeon.”

“Oh! And congratulations on graduating from medical school, by the way, I don’t remember if I told you,” Elena rushes, abruptly awkward. “I’m really thankful that you came out with me tonight—I know that you’re crazy busy these days with your residency training. I, um. I was kind of wondering, though, if, um…”

Reno, who has been wordlessly studying you from her side, rescues Elena’s floundering efforts: “if it’s not too much trouble for you, Doc, we’d like your medical opinion on something.”

“Of course,” you reply, even as your sore back and aching hips protest any more activity after the long shift you’ve just completed. You silently tell your back and hips that they can go ahead and shut the hell up, because _this_ is why you suffered through four long years of medical school and chose to undergo another five years of hell in this surgical residency. For all your misanthropy and perpetual grouchiness, you have always excelled at prioritizing others’ wellbeing over your own distaste for humanity at large.

“Thank you _so_ much!” Elena gushes, relief crashing over her face. “I’m so sorry that I made tonight into another work shift for you, and I _promise_ I’ll make it up to you sometime!”

“It’s no trouble,” you answer honestly, a genuine smile spreading across your lips. “This is the kind of thing that friends are for.”

Elena beams. Reno huffs in amusement. “We got your patient at a separate secure facility. Laney and I will escort you there.”

You maintain your nonchalance, but your stomach jumps. ‘ _Your_ patient.’ Clearly, Elena and Reno have already entrusted this mystery patient’s wellbeing to your hands. The military vernacular peppering Reno’s speech hasn’t gone unnoticed, either. Your mind throws wild scenarios: clandestinely treating wounded secret agents or assisting the open-heart surgery of a five-star general. You wonder if you even have the proper security clearances for that caliber of patient.

You rein in your imagination as Reno and Elena start making for the bar’s front entrance. Elena hasn’t said anything definitively yet about her job or her colleagues, and, despite the decidedly unkempt front that he presents to the world, Reno strikes you to be the tight-lipped sort. Like a good little scientist, you’ll wait until you have more concrete information before letting your speculation roam into the territory of espionage.

From your perspective a few inches behind the two of them in the crowded bar, you notice that their gentle prodding and herding of the crowd is remarkably well-coordinated—so much so that you find yourself experiencing no resistance as you float along in their wake, despite the close press of bodies around you. ‘Bodyguard to a foreign dignitary’ hops to the front of your list of Elena’s possible occupations.

Sooner than you expect, you’re sliding out of the warm embrace of the bar’s concentrated humanity and deposited into the cold night air outside. Elena shrugs on a fashionable red peacoat over her sleek turtleneck-and-jeans outfit while you stuff yourself unceremoniously into your own down jacket. (Sure, you might look like a walking marshmallow, but you were going to be a _warm_ walking marshmallow.) Apparently unaffected by the arctic temperatures, Reno waits for you two to finish warding off the late autumn chill, tapping a mindless rhythm on his thigh.

“We good?” Reno glances across you and Elena to confirm that you’re both bundled up to your satisfaction.

“Hey!” The brusque bark comes from behind you, and you know exactly who it is before you even turn around.

From over the bar’s threshold, McFrat and his gaggle of well-dressed, over-privileged lackeys spill out onto the sidewalk like champagne vomit. McFrat looks flushed from what you suspect is a combination of overindulgence and indignation at being snubbed. His gang of comrades blends in a similar, indistinct little mob of drunken rage that’s teetering on the edge of open violence.

McFrat swaggers forward menacingly, staggering from inebriation but steadied by anger. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, bitch. Stupid, uppity whore thinks she’s too good to talk to me…”

Now you wish you had obeyed your first instincts and thrown that glass in his face when you had had the chance. Unfortunately, McFrat & Co. are now standing between you and the bar’s bouncers. Considering the noise inside of the bar and your distance from the entrance, you’re not sure if the bar security will hear you if you call for them.

As McFrat looms closer, fear tightens your chest for the first time this evening. You’ve met boys like McFrat before: self-absorbed and totally lacking any understanding of responsibility and consequences because their enormous wealth and privilege have always shielded them from the repercussions of their own actions. _Will_ always shield them from the repercussions of their actions. Right now, that perceived invulnerability is spurring McFrat & Co. to do something reckless.

“Fellas,” Reno drawls, unruffled and conversational. He slips his hands under his untucked shirt and into his pockets as he situates himself in front of you and Elena. “Let’s head back inside, shall we? I’ll buy y’all a round of drinks for your troubles. These little ladies’re just on their way home.”

Reno’s casual dismissal of Elena and you chafes a little, but you stay silent. Diplomacy with the drunkards is a delicate and thankless art, and the least you can do is make Reno’s job a little easier for him.

McFrat’s piggy little eyes narrow, and you can practically see the cogs turning in his head as he and his friends sizes up your party. Six of them; three of you. The numbers are decidedly not in your favor. Maybe, though, Reno’s appeal has convinced them that scuffling with you isn’t worth the effort.

You can pinpoint the exact moment when McFrat’s wounded pride wins out against his better instincts to avoid conflict. He sneers: “I can afford my own drinks, asshole. Teaching your bitchy friends some manners is something that money can’t buy.”

Your heart kicks into overdrive at the threat, and while reaching for your phone, you wonder how long the average police response time is on a busy night of revelry in this neighborhood. McFrat and his flunkies take a couple of confident strides forward, ugly smiles on their faces, and now you _really_ wish that you had your gun, which is currently sitting locked away safely in your bedside dresser. Your cold fingers fumble over your phone’s lockscreen.

You’re not entirely sure what happens next. As you dial the second number of the emergency line, you hear an ominous metallic _snick-snick_ from Reno’s hand, and a dull glint on Elena’s fingers catches your eye. Before you can properly identify either, they sweep forward on either side of you in blurs of red and yellow, crashing headlong into the mess of drunken revelers.

Mortification barely starts to describe what you feel when you see Elena seize the lapel of one of McFrat’s friends. Elena hails from a military family that believes strongly in the virtue of extensive martial arts training. That being said, she probably weighs _half_ of one of those boys and is currently standing in _heels_ in the middle of a frozen street without anybody to call for help or back her up and _oh my God_ —

With her free hand, Elena smashes a handful of glinting steel into the boy’s exposed neck. Instantly, his wheezing gasps fill the air—but Elena hasn’t paused to admire her handiwork, dancing under another boy’s fist and returning the favor with a well-placed elbow to his face. The crunch and gargling that follow are punctuated by the thick, meaty snaps as Elena drives her fist down hard on her third attacker’s locked leg.

Then Elena straightens up, reflexively smoothing the front of her peacoat and—what the fuck—

“Are those—are those _brass knuckles_?” you blurt.

Elena jumps a little, as if she had forgotten your presence while doling out the merciless ten-second beatdown you just witnessed. Guilt shades her face when she sees your expression, her eyes glancing from you to the three rolling in agony on the pavement.

“Titanium-steel alloy, actually.” Reno strolls up to you slinging what appears to be _an honest-to-God nightstick_ across his shoulders. The length of telescoping steel bears a few dark stains that you assume were gifted by the other three frat boys lying in the street. With a practiced turn of his wrist, Reno flicks the dark liquid onto the ground and collapses the _freaking nightstick_. “Sorry if we spooked you there a little, doc.”

“Uh.” Your index finger is trembling, frozen in place over the timed-out screen of your phone. The ruthlessly clinical part of your brain whirs furiously, cataloguing bruises and broken bones. “I, uh.”

You nearly jump out of your skin at a gentle touch to your elbow. Your head swivels to see Elena taking a few steps back from you, hands raised disarmingly in the air. The gesture is ruined a little by the blood smeared along her wrist.

“Hey, listen, I know that this isn’t—you probably have a lot of questions—” Distressed, Elena wrings her hands, and again the dainty femininity of the motion clashes wildly with the heavy ‘ _titanium-steel alloy, actually_ ’ crowning her knuckles.

Uh, _hell yeah_ , you have a lot of questions. That being said, you’re also possessed of an impeccable sense of self-preservation that’s already figured out that hanging around here, a flock of assaulted socialites scattered at your feet, is Not A Good Idea. You’ve seen too much of the evening news to trust that the trigger-happy police department and bloodthirsty prosecutor’s office would conduct a proper (read: fair) investigation.

…and okay, fine, you also don’t really care enough about McFrat and his crew to risk your entire medical career getting pinned at the scene of a violent crime. So you swore an oath at your white coat ceremony. You _aren’t_ doing any harm. You just…also aren’t helping.

“Let’s get moving,” you say shortly, ignoring the guilty tug in the pit of your stomach. You shove your phone back into your pocket. “I don’t want to be anywhere near here when these kids wake up.”

Reno presents you with a look of dumbfounded surprise that quickly melts into mischievous glee. “ _Oh_. Laney. I like your friend.”

Your eyes narrow a fraction. You might be unscrupulous enough to exploit loopholes in your sacred oaths, but you sure as hell don’t _enjoy_ being strong-armed into complicity. “Can we just go? We can talk about this later.”

The passing look you glimpse on Elena’s face, though, startles you. Her mouth is closed-lipped and upturned, her eyes waxing crescents following the telltale pull of a Duchenne smile.

The strange expression scrubs itself from her pretty face so quickly that you might have imagined it. Drawing the collar of her peacoat closer to her neck, Elena nods. “Yeah, we should probably get going. Where’d you park the car, Reno?”

Reno lifts a key fob, and an SUV parked across the street chirps. Your eyes skim across the car’s windows (tinted too dark to be legal for a civilian vehicle) and license plates (bearing the Junon government’s embossed gold seal in place of a standard registration decal).

You glance at Elena to find that she’s already looking at you, cornflower-blue eyes wide and positively beatific. “Something wrong?”

You drag your gaze to the absurdly suspicious vehicle. Then back to her. You raise an eyebrow.

“Laney. I’m going to go home tonight with _both_ of my kidneys, right?”

Reno’s hyena laughter splits the air. “Oh, Laney. I _really_ like your friend.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, dear reader, for reading this far. I'd love if you'd drop a comment with your thoughts -- regardless, I sincerely wish you a wonderful week ahead and an even better weekend besides.


End file.
